Grievance is a powerful emotion. In spite of multiple admonitions in all of the world’s major religions, this potent emotion continues to influence the way we live. Sir Winston Churchill in a 1938 speech in Parliament, joked that a Brazilian man was informed of his of his mother-in-law’s death. The man gave instructions to “embalm, burn, and bury … take no chances.” Churchill was using humour to try to get the British government to wake up from their fever dream of peaceful accommodation with Nazi Germany, and increase defence spending. To prepare for a war that he saw coming in Europe. A war that at its heart stemmed from grievances over what had happened in 1918.
Savoyard philosopher and diplomat Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821), famously wrote in a letter that “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite” (Every nation has the government it deserves). I have for decades agreed with de Maistre. It is truly rare that nations are forced to endure political outcomes they have had no hand in creating. Granted, there are exceptions and one may argue that an informed electorate may not have foreseen what would actually happen if they elected this person or that. Certainly, the Germans could not have foreseen what the Nazi party would do to Germany if they seized power, and Americans could not imagine what the Republicans, the party of Abraham Lincoln, would do to life in America if power were handed to it. Or could they? Hitler’s Mein Kampf spelled it all out; the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 was even more detailed. Inflamed grievances overruled cold logic and the rest, as they say, is history.
Millennia ago the Buddha (563 – 483 BC) taught that holding onto anger was like drinking poison. More recently, Mark Twain wrote “Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” And yet, we seem not to want to listen to this ancient advice. It’s long past time to “embalm, burn, and bury” grievance politics, a form of political demagoguery that uses rhetoric that appeals to the prejudices of ill-informed people. In the last few decades, much of this rhetoric has been aimed at immigrants. Perhaps I am sensitive to this because I am an immigrant. Who can say?
We Canadians (and to a lesser extent Americans) have lived for too long with hollow and divisive virtue signaling, and identity politics. Much of the frustrations that these infantile philosophies and their resultant “cancel culture” politics engendered caused the rise of grievance politics to the extent that Americans elected a man so obviously unfit to be president that future historians will spend decades dissecting the rise of MAGA. A felonious, foul-mouthed leader who famously shouted at his rallies, “I am your retribution!” In Canada we elected (and reelected) a man whose only real qualification to lead the national government was that his father had been PM.
Either way, this was madness and to quote de Maistre, each country got what it deserved.
Many political observers have been predicting the death of the MAGA movement to our south and all I can say about that is good riddance. We need to do the same here. Such negativity is exhausting. (Can someone please mention this to the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition?) More importantly, it does not improve the situation. Such politics are based on the false premise that hatred, fear, and anger are stronger than love and hope.
I am not a naïf; I understand that politics is a full-contact occupation, but I do not recall it being so nasty when I was a boy. The PM and the Leader of the Opposition may not have agreed, nor even liked each other much, but they did not spout poisonous rhetoric to their party members. We are fortunate as Canadians. It is not unusual for Canadians to vote one way in municipal elections, another way in provincial elections, and yet another way in federal elections. It is a strength of our national identity and our politics. Can we now just remove the vitriol, please?
PS: I wrote this post BEFORE the US mid-term election. Americans seem to have woken up. James Talarico won his senate race on platform of “love thy neighbour.” NOTE: This was in Texas! Dare we hope?
